
Wagner Hangover!
(but first, another photo of Venice. That's St. Mark's Square - you can just see the domes - from some boat I was on.)
The performance of Die Meistersinger at the Volksoper (or “People’s Opera House”) last night was incredible. You know how it is with Wagner; you think you aren’t going to be able to stand a third act that lasts about two and a half hours, and by the end you are saying, “Over already? Play it again!” That’s the way it was with this production. The male voices were magnificent. I wanted to marry Hans Sachs (both the character and the singer who played him). Admittedly, there were some bizarre and

That's the Volksoper building.
Fortunately, of course, Wagner’s music is so transcendent and miraculous that none of those little peccadilloes (did I spell that right?) mattered in the least, and by the end I was weeping, along with the large Austrian man in the seat next to me, who had sat through much of the opera with his fists clenched with the intensity of the emotion he was feeling. It was about 90 degrees plus in the theater – no air conditioning for either the audience or the singers or the orchestra – and the singers were sweating so much their costumes were completely soaked. The only person I didn’t see sweat at all was the conductor. He was unbelievably composed throughout, and conducted in what I thought was a very Wagnerian style, which is to say he presented us with a “solid wall of sound” (as our professor described it this morning) or I might say a dense and undifferentiated luscious liquid of sound in which we were immersed for five and a half hours. What a sensation! When we came out of the theater there was another one of those incredible Austrian thunderstorms. We ducked into a charming café where a pianist was playing Strauss waltzes. When we got home, we were all still keyed up and sat up on the rooftop patio until 1 am, watching the lightning, drinking wine, and toasting the great Richard Wagner.
1 Comments:
At 2:35 PM,
Anonymous said…
Adina!
It's Jonathan! I've read some of your blog over the past few weeks and it looks like you're having a good time, so that's good. Beth and I saw Rowan and Jack on the Ave the day you left.
Things with me are ok... I'll fill you in when you're back. I wondered if you could give me Suzanne's new address... she made me that lasagna like three weeks ago and I finall wroter her a thank you note... I just don't know where to mail it since she moved. Keep having fun... there's a party at Ebrey's tonight so I'm sure Stephen and the rest of us will do the same.
Jonathan
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